I highly encourage you to read the following two posts BEFORE reading this one so as to understand why I am seeking a divorce from the Church: “Semantics, Language & Prophecy” & “Why Criticize a System and Not People?“
If you are short on time, here is a quick summary of these two posts:
APOLOGETICS
As I’ve started to share with friends and family, the reactions have been mixed. Some could really seem to care less, some have been completely open and accepting…while others find what I am saying or trying to say offensive. I have had numerous “random” requests from well meaning acquaintances whom read my blog offering to reach out to me…and had others request for me to continue to listen to one more sermon or read one more thing or keep seeking the truth. I have even had a few say good-bye.
In my “little me” stance, this is has been really hard. Tears, frustrations, breaks from friends and family have all been part of this journey already. For quite a few of these people I just wanted to say, “But don’t you know me? Haven’t you seen my ‘marriage’ to the Church these last 16 years and know that I have been fully devoted and committed to that doctrine? I am not some seed that fell on the road or next to it…I was deeply, deeply planted. I mean if you could see my heart, really see it – don’t you still see Jesus there? Please do not try to re-evanglize me…I’ve been there, done that. What I have found is something greater…something more…like a living Well of Water.”
Here’s the thing, though, when I take that step back from all this, when I step back and stop thinking of myself, I totally get it. I get all of it…for even as I WRITE all that I have and will write, I can HEAR…I can HEAR my apologetic training rearing its ready made questions and answers inside of me.
Yes, even I
– one who was reared in the Apologetics era of Christianity in the mid ’90s
– one who took to learning the Doctrines I thought were in the Bible like a fish to water
– one who has read Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, Bill Bright, Ravi Zacharias, Timothy Keller and the like (interesting, in a quick search of the internet for big wig christians…where are the women?)
– one who attended almost all 7 years of Bible Study Fellowship and faithfully did all her homework;
– one who almost went to seminary..
– one who thought she would never leave the Church for I LOVED the Church and the people there…it was my life and what I lived for…
…yes even I am walking away with my hands up saying “what gives?”
RESOUNDING GONGS AND CLANGING SYMBOLS
I am reminded of the verses in 1 Corinthians 13 that talk about having a lot of great stuff…but that even with all that great stuff if we do not have LOVE, then we are just a resounding gong, a clanging cymbal, a nothing.
While I am sure others have reached this conclusion and decided to stay in the Church, I am being led out…but not quietly. I still have a heart for those in the Church, for brothers and sisters that I see who are struggling to grasp a Love that first and foremost tells them they are evil…and to see them lead lives that have no real change or hope at the core of who they are. I have felt for some time that my part in this world would be to help set the captives free within the Church – and I just thought that was about the entire gender role and abusive relationship issue…not about the entire System of the Church itself. It saddens me to think that the Church at large of my generation has for the most part become “a resounding gong, a clanging cymbal, a nothing” to those that it means to serve. No wonder so many are leaving…
I really thought that I would never be at this crossroads of feeling the need to exit the Church since I saw the Church still as means of doing great good in our society. But the truth is, I find myself no longer able to support a System that I feel is getting the message of Jesus wrong…a System that is still part of the very System Jesus spoke about and so harshly against. A System that always creates an “other” category out of real people and then labels them as “evil” with the only way of eradicating that “evil” with more violence.
A SYSTEM OF DUALISM
This System calls even the very bodies we live in and were given by the Divine to enjoy evil…which can only create a very real divide in our souls as we learn to hate our own bodies that supposedly the Divine ordained. Does any one else see the contradiction in this type of teaching/thinking or is it just me?
All that hate we are taught to have for ourselves, starting with the doctrine of original sin, comes out in the form of something: our thought and speech about ourselves, our thoughts and speech about/to others; PMS, depression/anxiety, narcissism and the like; workaholics, shopaholics; alcoholics and the like; obesity and it’s related chronic diseases; rage against ourselves and rage against others, including the innocent – and the list could go on. This list doesn’t even begin to describe how this hate effects the energy of our planet…
As I look back at the central teachings of my Evangelical faith and how I was taught to hate the body for it is “evil” and that the spiritual world is of more importance, I realize that there was no way for me to love as I am called to love. The energy of hate that was building up inside of me took over any possibility for me to love…my body was so full of the negative energy of hate that it poured out into my health, my thoughts, my words and into the lives of those around me. Instead of sleeping soundly at night, my depressions, anxieties and insomnia grew to heightened states where I could no longer function as a person.
No wonder being like Jesus was so far fetched of a concept to me…I wasn’t being taught to Love like Jesus…for how can one Love like Jesus if they are so full of hate on the inside for a body they are told is “evil” – yet supposedly given this very same body to live in by this loving god that is telling them their body is “evil”?
A METAPHOR
I have debated about whether or not to share my actual reasons as to why I am “divorcing the Church System” for I was not sure it would be helpful. However, I guess for people to know where I stand – at least for today – I decided that yes I will share this in the next post.
For today, I wanted to share why I am using this idea of “divorce” between me and my “groom” whom I have faithfully and lovingly served and been married to for over 16 years. My hopes and prayers are that this will not so much quiet fears and alleviate doubts about where I stand when I am writing…for I think it is only when we face our fears and our doubts we see reflected in others that we allow ourselves to either open up more to Love or shy away more in fear.
Who knows, perhaps in me and my writings about my own journey you find much angst is rising up in your own heart. Perhaps you feel offended or hurt by what I am saying…like I am trying to put down your god or your beliefs. No matter how much I say this is by no means my goal nor my heart nor my intentions, I cannot tell you how to take what you read here. That is up to you and your soul. All I can do is challenge you with this:
They often say that what we see in others is really a reflection of what is going on in our own souls, good or ugly. So, the question then is not really where do I stand, but where do you see yourself in me? Why is it that you read my story, what inside you compels you to read on?
THE BIBLE & DIVORCE
I was given a book this last year that talked about Biblical divorce. The book was extremely helpful at the time, even though I had already decided to leave my marriage by this point and knew I was justified in doing so.
However, it did add some new concepts while helping me solidify my own conclusions, one of which was what was actually at the heart of any divorce. Here is that conclusion: no matter what the outward “sin” was that ended a marriage…the real “sin”, the real reason – according to this book – was always the hardening of the heart towards God’s Love.
God himself in Jeremiah, speaks of the reason he decides to divorce his own people. Their hearts are hard towards what he says his truths are.
Jesus himself in the Gospels speaks out about the hardening of the heart. It seems that his harshest words were always reserved for those that made up the Church of his day. It seems that for the most part, Jesus himself also chose to “divorce” the Church of his day and to take his message outside Its walls.
The bible uses the word divorce as a way to put into terms what happens in another realm, another dimension. It is helpful, I think, to look at what happens in a divorce and to apply the symbolism here.
When someone pursues a divorce, that is because there has been a hardening of the heart(s). Either one or both of the parties is unwilling to look at their fault in the marriage ~ to own it, to understand it, to work through it and to learn from it.
Both parties suffer no matter what. Both parties in an unhealthy relationship stop moving towards the Divine, and stop moving towards each other. So either one or both of the parties involved decides that this current way of relating to each other is not good, not healthy, not beneficial to them and that a new relationship – if possible – must be formed.
Let’s take the story of resurrection and look at it in terms of “divorce”. In order for resurrection to even happen, a death must first happen. In order for the old relationship to become something new, it has to die off…to go away, to be buried. It needs a death. It needs a tomb with a stone where the old relationship can be laid to rest. The ground where this relationship once routed itself needs to have an uprooting and a tilling – then allowed to sit, unplanted…allowed to have a deep dark Winter before anything else is replanted in that spot. That is the only way that there can be room to form a new relationship, to have a “rebirth” or a “renewal” into something – well something new. To have a new way of relating to each other that will hopefully give both parties room to get healthy and to once again be able to start moving towards the Divine.
I now see that this is what must happen for me and the Evangelical Church I once aligned myself with. I no longer agree with putting doctrine above Love, of putting doctrine in the whole scheme to begin with. I feel that for the most part the System of the Church and Its Doctrine, is teaching real people to hardened their hearts to the Spiritual Truths Jesus happened to see. The System does this so subliminally, so under the radar it has taken many good-hearted people years to figure out.
Or perhaps not much has changed since the days of Jesus. For just as the System of Jesus’ day loved its laws, so does the System of our day. Our System is holding on for dear life to their “love of the law” over their Love – which in a twist of all twist is the Divine….for God is Love, God = Love right?
In putting Its “love of the law” above Love itself, the System has alienated not only me, but many others while also oppressing a large amount of people both in and outside the Church walls. This message to me is not good news. This message I can no longer call the Gospel.
There is no other way to start a new System – which is really a new relationship – that I am calling for us to start unless first a divorce from the current one takes place. Unless this old relationship to the Law, to the Doctrine is laid to rest so that a new life may be rebirthed, resurrected in its place.
TO BE CONTINUED WITH “GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE“
